Cover Story: Subway Sleuthing

Edward Koren, a longtime New Yorker artist, asked us to arrange for him to visit the driver’s compartment of a subway car so that he could accurately depict the machinery in the foreground of this week’s cover, “In Transit.” The M.T.A. declined his request, so Koren says he “rode the subway a lot to stealthily look into subway cabs, trying to catch a glimpse of control panels.” He especially liked the shuttle between Times Square and Grand Central, “even though it was an older train,” because “it would stop for a longer period of time at the station, so I could sneak around to the front.” The controls changed from his sketch (below) to the final cover.

So did the moose.

Sign up for our daily newsletter and get the best of The New Yorker in your in-box.

Under the southern portion of the city exists its negative image: a network of more than two hundred miles of galleries, rooms, and chambers.

As the years passed, Tom grew more entrenched in his homelessness. He was absorbed in lofty fantasies and private missions, aware of the basest necessities and the most transcendent abstractions, and almost nothing in between.